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Datum: Donnerstag, den 12. Dezember 2002, um 15:27 Uhr
Betrifft: HLT-Kirche bekräftigt keine Totentaufen von Juden

Als die Kirche Jesu Christi der Heiligen der Letzten Tage 1995 mit dem Simon-Wiesenthal-Center in Los Angeles eine Vereinbarung abschloss, die die stellvertretende Taufe von verstorbenen Juden, insbesondere der dem Holocaust zum Opfer gefallenen, mit nur wenigen Ausnahmen untersagte, wurden aus dem International Genealogical Index (IGI) 400 000 jüdische Namen entfernt. Auf einem erneuten Treffen, das von der HLT-Kirche gewünscht wurde, hat die Kirche diese Vereinbarung bekräftigt. Dennoch sind nach Studien 1999 noch etwa 19 000 Namen von Juden, darunter auch Holocaustopfern aus Russland, Polen, Frankreich und Österreich, im IGI enthalten gewesen. Die Handauslese stellt sich schwierig dar, insbesondere auf Grund des ungeschulten Personals, und soll deshalb jetzt durch Datenbankunterstützung automatisiert werden.

In der AP-Pressemeldung wird der IGI so beschrieben: Das ist eine Liste von etwa 600 Millionen Namen von Verstorbenen, die Mormonen zeremoniell in den Glauben hinein taufen. Dies soll den Vorfahren der Mormonen die Erlösung ermöglichen, aber es sind auch viele andere davon betroffen. Ein unabhängiger Forscher sagt, dass sich unter denen, die nach ihrem Tod getauft wurden, auch Anne Frank, Dschingis Khan, Jeanne d’Arc, Adolf Hitler und Buddha befinden.

The Salt Lake Tribune
THURSDAY December 12, 2002

LDS Church Reaffirms No Proxy Baptisms of Jews

BY PEG McENTEE
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

    The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints affirmed Wednesday it will not permit posthumous baptisms of any people known to be Jewish, including Holocaust victims, albeit with a minute number of exceptions.
    The church’s statement came a day after a meeting in New York with Ernest Michel, chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Victims and himself a Holocaust survivor, to revisit a 1995 agreement discouraging Mormons from submitting the names of deceased Jews to the faith’s enormous genealogical database.
    According to the 1995 agreement, no deceased Jews, particularly those who perished in the Holocaust, would be the subjects of baptism by proxy, a Mormon temple ordinance intended to offer those in the spirit world the opportunity to embrace the LDS faith.
    The exceptions are for Mormons whose direct ancestors were Jewish, or when the immediate family of a deceased Jew agrees to the baptism.
    "Yesterday’s meeting, which the church requested, furthers the cooperative relationship established by our 1995 agreement," said D. Todd Christofferson of the LDS Church’s Presidency of the Seventy, who met with Michel. "That agreement recognizes the right of Latter-day Saints to practice their religion while also acknowledging the particular sensitivities of the Jewish people."
    While declining to go into specifics, Michel said the subject of the meeting was "not so much the agreement in 1995, but how we can best make it function and implement it. They agreed totally, that there is no change in their point of view . . . and the church will stick to the agreement."
    Nevertheless, he said, there were "certain cracks that have appeared that have caused trouble with some members of the Jewish community. Basically, the church stands as is and the church will do everything it can do to deal with the problems."
    Michel cautioned that any revised wording of the agreement would be weeks in coming and said that the number of permitted baptisms would be insignificant.
    As part of the 1995 agreement, the LDS Church removed the names of about 400,000 deceased Jews from its International Genealogical Index. The names included in the index can be used for baptisms by proxy performed by living church members.
    Since 1999, however, independent researcher Helen Radkey of Salt Lake City has analyzed the index and found the names of about 19,000 deceased people from European regions where Jews died in Nazi concentration camps.
    Of those, between 40 percent and 50 percent, Radkey said, "had the potential to be Holocaust victims . . . in Russia, Poland, France and Austria."
    Christofferson said Wednesday that in addition to the 400,000 names of deceased Jews, "additional names are being removed each month."
    However, removing the names is an "ongoing, labor-intensive process requiring name-by-name research," said Christofferson. "When the church is made aware of documented concerns, action is taken in compliance with the agreement.
    "Plans are under way to refine this process using online Internet resources," he added.
    Radkey, who has said she converted from Catholicism to Mormonism and was excommunicated in 1978 after disputing church discipline of other members, scoffed at the notion that the church itself could successfully remove the names, which must be carefully researched to determine whether they are indeed Jewish.
    "This is an unrealistic goal," she said in an e-mail. "Most Mormons who handle the processing, including deletions, of Jewish names from the LDS database would not know a Jewish name from the back end of a hoe."

Quelle

Deseret News
Tuesday, December 10, 2002

LDS and Jewish officials meeting

Talks were to focus on LDS baptisms of dead

By C.G. Wallace
Associated Press staff writer

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were to meet with the chairman of a Jewish organization in New York City on Tuesday to talk about an apparent breach of the faith’s agreement not to baptize dead Jews.

In 1995, the LDS Church promised to stop conducting posthumous baptisms of Holocaust victims and other deceased Jews.

Ernest W. Michel, chairman of the World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, will be discussing that policy with church officials. He called the talk preliminary.

Baptism of the dead is a rite performed in LDS temples. The faithful believe that these baptisms give those in the afterlife the option of joining the religion. It is intended to offer salvation to ancestors of church members; however, many others are included in the ritual.

"For Latter-day Saints, the practice of proxy baptism is a means of expressing love and concern for those who have proceeded us. It is a freewill offering," church spokesman Dale Bills said Tuesday.

Elder Monte Brough, a member of the Quorums of the Seventy, and Elder D. Todd Christofferson, a member of the Presidency of the Seventy, were expected to be at the meeting to "discuss ongoing cooperative efforts to administer the church’s 1995 agreement with U.S. Jewish organizations regarding posthumous baptisms of Holocaust victims," Bills said. Michel and Elder Brough were among those who brokered the original agreement.

Bills said the church may not have a statement to make after Tuesday’s meeting.

The proxy baptisms are performed inside LDS temples, with a church member being immersed in water in place of the deceased person. Names of the deceased are gathered by church member from genealogy records and death and governmental records from around the world.

Independent researcher Helen Radkey, who prepared a report for Michel, said there is no doubt that the agreement has been broken.

In her research of the church’s extensive genealogical database, she found a sample of 20,000 Jews who had been baptized, she said. Among those records, Radkey found a number of Jewish Holocaust victims.

"I’m concerned about the death camp records. There shouldn’t be one single death camp record in those files," Radkey said.

Radkey has been researching Jews included among the LDS databases since 1999, when she found Anne Frank and her extended family included in the rolls.

While she also has found a number of famous people on the rolls, including Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Buddha, Radkey said she now focuses on death camp victims.

Her report states: "The LDS church has not made an honest or reasonable effort, in my opinion, to keep its end of the contract made with Jewish groups in 1995."

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, said if the LDS Church is serious about its pledge to keep Holocaust victims from being baptized, it should rein in its members.

"It’s insensitive and arrogant," Hier said. "If these people did not contact the Mormons themselves, the adage should be: Don’t call me, I’ll call you. With the greatest of respect to them, we do not think they are the exclusive arbitrators of who is saved."

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